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This week, the Chinese Literature Podcast goes where few literary scholars have gone before. We take a look at some poetry by sex workers in the city of Dalian. In the podcast, I use the poem to tackle issues of gender in China. Be forewarned, there is some explicit language in this poetry. 

This week, Lee interviews Kyle Anderson, who has just published the first volume in a young adult series titled MountainSea Scrolls. This first volume is called The 9 Tailed Fox. Dr. Anderson describes the series as Narnia meets China.  Dr. Anderson has also worked in translation and academia, and his work includes the translation of the fascinating Forget Me. 

On the previous episode, I went all the way to the beginning of Chinese literature. This episode, I explore a contemporary novel, Mo Yan's Red Sorghum. It won Mo Yan the Nobel Prize, it has been made into a famous movie, this novel has been very influential. Let's dive in!

Oracle Bones (甲骨文) are the oldest written Chinese texts that have ever been discovered. Today, Lee looks at what Oracle Bones are, how they were discovered in the 1890's and reads out the translation of two of them in a podcast that takes it back to the very beginning of Chinese literature. 

Our 'traditional' new year/end of the year podcast where we update listeners on what is happening with our lives and the podcast. This year, we sadly have to announce that Rob is no longer going to be a regular contributer to the podcast. Lee will be taking both reins, though Rob will come back on from time to time. In this episode, Rob and Lee discuss the podcast, its history and their lives. 

This week we have a poem by Gu Cheng 顧城, one of the wonderboys to come out of the 1980's. He left China, immigrating to New Zealand, got a teaching job and then murdered his wife with an ax. His poetry was as sharp and succinct as his ax.

In this week's episode, we look at a series of three poems by Su Dongpo, the Song poet who was sent into exile multiple times. This series of poems is about his time in the crummiest of exiles, on Hainan Island. Drunkeness here is a metaphor for giving up on life in officialdom (though it was also non-metaphorical as well...). 

This week, Rob and Lee look at a short essay where Ouyang Xiu talks about a Mei Yaochen poem that he finds woven into the fabric of a barbarian's bag. Their discussion touches not only on the poem, but also on questions of the materiality of literature. 

Bei Dao is one of the first great poets in the Post-Mao era, and this short poem demonstrates why. 

This week looks a poem by Mao Zedong celebrating the communist defeat of a tiny parasite. "Shooing Away the God of Epidemics" was written in 1956 upon Mao hearing that a county in Jiangxi had eliminated all their blood flukes.  #1 China’s green waters and the blue mountains are so numerous but even the great ancient Chinese medical theorist Hua Tou is unable to take care of this little worm, The thousand villages are covered in vines and peppered with their leaking shit, the ten thousand homes are abandoned, only ghosts sing inside them.  He sits on the Earth everyday and walks 80,000 miles, He roams through the heavens and looks out the distance at the thousand rivers. China’s Orion constellation desires to ask the God of Epidemics about it, happiness and hopelessness are all the same as time goes by.   其一 绿水青山枉自11多，华佗2无奈小虫何！ 千村薜荔3人遗矢12，万户萧疏13鬼唱歌。 坐地日行八万里，巡天14遥看一千河。 牛郎4欲问瘟神事，一样悲欢15逐逝波5。 #2 A spring wind blows through a billion poplar and willow branches, the 600 million Chinese of today live like the sage kings of old, Yao and Shun.  Showers of red petals, and our fulfilled hearts have been translated into waves,  the green mountain has been carefully transformed into bridges.  High up, the people are using their silvery hoes to dig canals,  down low, they are using their iron biceps to shake China’s three great rivers. May I ask, Old Man epidemic, where will you go, now [that communism has solved all problems] maybe you can use the light from the superstitious paper money the people used to burn to light your way out of here.  其二 春风杨柳万千条22，六亿神州尽舜尧6。 红雨7随心16翻作17浪，青山着意18化为桥。 天连五岭银锄18落，地动三河8铁臂20摇。 借问21瘟君欲何往，纸船明烛9照天烧。    

This week, we are looking at a poem in the news. We are airing on Saturday, October 15th, 2022. On Thursday October 13th, 2022, just three days before Chairman Xi Jinping is supposed to be anointed for his third term, someone mounted the Sitong Bridge in Beijing and unfurled two banners. One had a poem which read:   We don’t want nucleic acid [tests], we want to eat We don’t want the Cultural Revolution, we want reform    We don’t want lockdowns, we want freedom We don’t want a leader, we want voting   We don’t want lies, we want respect We don’t want to be slaves, we want to be citizens   不要核酸1要吃饭3，不要文革要改革 不要封城要自由，不要领袖4要选票 不要谎言要尊严，不做奴才2做公民

Today's podcast is Rob-less, and it looks at the 1052 poem by Wang Anshi, China's controversial economic thinker. This poem (probably) has little to do with Wang's economic policies, but is rather all about his love for his father and elder brothers and his meditation on his own mortality. 

The last episode in our mini-series on Zhuangzi, we look at one of the most elequent passages in all of the Zhuangzi, even if it almost certainly was not written by Zhuangzi himself. Autumn Floods focuses on understanding how tiny we are in the universe. 

He cuts the ox without dulling his blade because he uses the Dao to do it. He does not hack, but rather finds the spaces in between to seek out the path of least resistance for his cleaver. And he is one of the most important parables to come out of Zhuangzi. This week, Rob and Lee turn to Butcher Ting. 

Today is part 2 of our accidental series onf Zhuangzi. We did not mean to do a series on Zhuangzi, but the book is just too fascinating to put down. This week, we try to get at what the meaning of Dao (not Tao, as we explain), at least, what it means according to Zhuangzi. 

Death is tough to grapple with, but it is a reality we, all to often, face the wrong way. In this episode, we take a look at how Zhuangzi, the famed Warring States philosopher, mourns his dead wife. 

Where did the Uighur name come from? It might seem crazy, but a poet in the 1930's took Uighur as his penname, and the Uighur people may have taken their name from that man (well, it is a little bit more complicated than that, but those are the basics). Abdukhaliq Uighur called on his people to rise up against the Chinese and become the Uighur people. We look at a poem that he wrote when he was facing execution in in Chinese prison cell. 

Xi Xi, one of Hong Kong's most famous writers, pens a weird, postmodern portrait of Hong Kong. Rob does not like it, Lee does. Why? Take a listen as they tackle this weird and sometimes wonderful effort to deal with what Hong Kong is. Or, is it even Hong Kong?